William Bourne lived from 1535 to 1582. Way back in the 16th century, he was one of the first people to hypothesize the concept of a submarine. He was a mathematician and inventor and he even drew up sketches of how the said submarine would work. Men would have thought it extremely futuristic at the time, but within 200 years, it became real. It is said that his grandson lived to see the first one trialed.

Science fiction does become reality, and things like satellite in recent times were in fiction just about 50 years before they were created. And we see lots of examples of that. Another one that is popular is about the Google car going around and taking real snapshots for the GPS and maps so we can actually look on the computer and see where we’re going to go and what it’s going to look like at a point in time. So it’s not just specific to tech businesses today. What we have in many ways is still a narrow form of AI. The kind of thing that will get into the basic side of accounting should be supported by things like robots. Robotics is coming here and we see lots of different automation today.

An article by McKinsey called “Burned by the Boss why RPAs, stumble” breaks it down in a really interesting way.

Routine processes are more complex than anticipated. Even the most routine tasks requires a nuance of understanding that is implicit when a human is handling the process.

For example, in the case of say, processing invoices, or the invoice, just the design of the PDF may prove to be a challenge. Today AI enabled invoice processing bots can solve this problem, but only with a little bit of human assistance. So you have to have a process of re evaluation of the process, reprogram the automation is that your robot can do what you wanted to do.

It’s not just about understanding, but it is about transcending what is actually going to meet in the future. We want to highlight that if you automate to eliminate, then the reduction in cost comes from investing in people who are knowledgeable in both finance and IT. Then manpower can be reduced. Such cross-functional talent is only now beginning to be developed.

Robotic process automation is not going to be the silver bullet. This is not a solution that’s going to fix everything. But, we need to start looking at how we can actually make it suitable because it is definitely the future. So when we start preparing for the transformational process; understanding that RPA is very powerful; we need to ensure that we’re looking at the processes and understanding when it actually makes sense to actually engage it and when it doesn’t. So if you have a poor manual process today, by automating it you still have an automatic but a very poor process.

We need to look at it as part of the toolkit and it really will help to connect the human component to the actual overall process. We need to understand where it fits within the whole process to actually add value and not look at them to solve problems. Enable the link between the two, the human component and the actual technology.

What can you achieve through robotic process automation?

To do that in financial accounting. First, break down that rigid accounting calendar that we’re all so used to doing and see what needs to change to meet up business needs. These are the things you can achieve through RPA

• Why do we have to do only monthly recommendations? Why not daily if we can use robotic process automation?
• Why does the accounts office reply manually to report requests which can be automated? Of course, authorization levels mean that only Accounts can generate the report, but why can’t a bot do it?
• Why can’t that person and department’s journals be entered earlier? Can it be automated?
• Why can’t we have the firm’s key numbers on a daily basis?
• Account reconciliations, why can’t it be recreated?
• Preparation of trial balance should be able to be done automatically and the analytics such as flux analysis too
• Produce reports that drive the understanding of the variance

And this is where we start talking about implementing accounting automation solution. And it’s really a journey that every organization is going on to embed process standardization, automation continual review to really drive the Finance department beyond the transactional repetitive nature of everything, become that real strategic partner of the business.

But how do we do that? If we’re driving automation,

• It is good to have a rules based environment
• Nice templates, workflow efficiency and the ability to have information coming in via exception management
• So humans are not looking at everything. They only look at the outliers, the anomalies within the system
• We should have some triggers in there taking the time to do the corrective action. Eg: So this will develop into automated corrections for a journal, for example, or via minimal manual intervention
• A continual cycle of review and how do we things through different modules

The low hanging fruits of robotic process automation can be realized over a six month to 12 months period depending upon what the struggles are within your organization and how open you are towards accounting automation and engaging other robotic automation processes.

But we need to get to the point that we understand what we’re doing today all points towards a fully transformed and automated process. The next wave of competitive advantage will come from having humans be at their creative and communicative best.

Another thing which a good RPA platform can do for you by default is to ensure that technology has the ISO 27001 certification so that all your data is kept, and it’s fully encrypted, both in transmission and at rest.

As a goal, we try to automate that traditional record, and report assembly process that we go through at the end of the month from the 25th to the 5th of every month. The period when there’s no analysis being done, because we’re just so busy doing the repetitive work versus actually focusing on the analysis. Go from there into a more streamlined analytical process where we’re looking at what’s going on.

If you are an accounting firm looking to streamline your accounting processes, then you are the right place. Schedule your accounting automation demo to see in real-time how robotic automation can seamlessly optimize your accounting and finance departments.